ReadWrite - David Sobottahttp://readwrite.com/author/david-sobotta
enCopyright 2015 Wearable World Inc.http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rssTue, 03 Mar 2015 13:50:10 -0800Why Is Internet Still So Slow And Expensive In The U.S.?<!-- tml-version="2" --><p>Most people in the United States can't get a decent Internet connection.<strong> </strong>That seems like a simple enough problem, but there is no easy solution. To make matters more confusing, most information floating around about broadband availability is confusing and contradictory. A lot needs to be sorted out before we get decent connections at an affordable price.&nbsp;</p><p><strong></strong></p><p>Take the&nbsp;<a href="http://nbm.gov/Tqln">National Broadband Map</a>. Many of us in the industry define true broadband as a symmetric connection with at least 100 megabits per second (Mbps). &nbsp;If you believe the National Broadband map, 97% of North Carolina (where I live) has access to&nbsp;100 Mbps.&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet, almost no one that I know either in North Carolina or across the United States can download at at that speed. (Check <a href="http://readwrite.com/2013/10/28/just-how-bad-is-your-internet-connection">my earlier article</a> for a chart of speeds that my technology aware friends shared with me last fall.)</p><p>Meanwhile, the FCC’s minimum standard for broadband is set as 4 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload, but no one I know considers that true broadband.</p><p>Beyond confusing information, I see six factors which impact the broadband speed and cost in the U.S.</p><h2>Current Providers Monopolize The Market</h2><p>If you have options other than DSL or cable-modem service from a couple of providers, you live in an area that is very fortunate among US &nbsp;locations. <a href="http://www.ftthcouncil.org/p/bl/et/blogid=3&amp;blogaid=182">The best number</a> that I can find indicates that there are only 640,000 households in the U.S. that meet the gold standard of 100 Mbps.&nbsp;</p><p>Canada, which has a much smaller population, has 540,000 homes with similar fiber connectivity. With over 117,000,000 households in the U.S., our 640,000 homes translates to about one half of one percent of homes having access to true “big broadband.”&nbsp;</p><p><a href="http://gigaom.com/2014/02/12/the-potential-winners-and-losers-if-comcast-buys-time-warner-cable/">Three quarters of the U.S.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;has access to only two “little broadband” providers, usually cable modem or DSL—not&nbsp;really a choice if you want "big broadband" speeds. Just as in the days when we had limited choice with telephone service, costs will be higher and service will be poorer when there is no competition.</p><h2>There Is Little Incentive For Better Service</h2><p>Current providers are reaping a fortune. Comcast made <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/04/rolling-in-it-comcast-profited-1-9-billion-in-first-3-months-of-2014/">$6.8 billion in profits last year</a>. Time Warner <a href="http://variety.com/2014/biz/news/time-warner-beats-street-as-warner-bros-and-cable-nets-post-record-profits-for-2013-1201087500/">managed $3.6 billion in profits</a>. Of course these companies don't make all of that money from delivering connectivity, but a&nbsp;Comcast proposal to buy Time Warner and further consolidate the industry is under review by the FCC. One has to wonder how consumers will benefit if <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victoria-peng/will-comcasts-shoddy-customer-service_b_5586041.html">two of the worst offenders on customer service</a>&nbsp;merge. It's unlikely that we will get faster Internet connectivity out of the deal.</p><h2>Current Technology Is Old And Expensive To Upgrade</h2><p>Cable and telephone/DSL providers mostly use copper wire technology. A lot of it is cable that was put in the ground years ago; the fully amortized infrastructure is helping to fuel the huge profits above. Installing fiber can cost $3,000 or more per home. We're already being gouged with premium rates, so why would we pay even more? Obviously the incumbents think it is highly unlikely we will, so there's little incentive to install lots of new fiber. Don't expect new upgrades to the old copper technology won't rescue us any time soon.</p><h2>There Is No National Strategy For True “Big Broadband”</h2><p>The FCC’s most recent program is focused on helping established telecommunications carriers deliver broadband services. Yet if you look at all the recent successes in bringing fiber to communities, it is not established carriers but startups—innovative companies and municipalities—who are tired of waiting and are finding the help they need get fiber projects underway.&nbsp;</p><p>The FCC has come down on the side of municipal broadband and <a href="http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/fccs-wheeler-challenges-tennessees-anti-municipal-broadband-laws/2014-06-11">challenged laws</a> like the one in Tennessee that make it harder for cities to participate in broadband projects. On the other hand the House of Representatives wants to <a href="http://www.broadcastingcable.com/news/washington/blackburn-bill-would-block-fcc-preemption/132468">let states limit broadband competition from cities</a> which have delivered most of our big broadband successes. Our government does not seem to have a coherent strategy of getting us to true big broadband.</p><h2>Broadband Is Actually Infrastructure</h2><p>Broadband is best compared to the Interstate Highway System. We did not design and pay for our highways so that only trucks from one company could use it. We designed it so that everyone can use it.&nbsp;</p><p>If we had a program to construct fiber-based "digital road systems," then any company that wanted to deliver services via the shared digital road system could do so—if they are willing to pay the appropriate fees. If we have more than one service provider offering services and competing for our business, we would get lower costs and better service.</p><p>On an open access fiber network such as <a href="http://thewiredroad.net/">The WiredRoad</a>, business Internet connection costs drop up to 40% and consumer costs are reduced a significant but lesser amount. If it were easier to finance fiber construction with low-cost municipal or government bonds, we would have more fiber. However, incumbent providers have lobbied in many states like North Carolina to make that illegal.</p><h2>People Do Not Understand True Big Broadband And Its Economic Benefits</h2><p>True 100 Mbps symmetric broadband has the potential to fundamentally alter many of the assumptions underlying our economy. Currently one of the reasons we travel to work in office buildings clustered in large cities is that is where it is economically feasible to provide the connectivity that modern workers need.&nbsp;</p><p>If workers could get 100 Mbps at their home, we could have smaller office buildings and people could work from home more often—reducing the use of fossil fuels and reducing wear and tear on streets and highways.</p><p>It would also become much more practical to start a business from home if you have affordable, high performance connectivity. If you can do high quality multi-point video conferencing from your home, you can accomplish more work with less travel.&nbsp;</p><p><a href="http://www.ftthcouncil.org/">Fiber To The Home</a> has the same kind of explosive growth potential as the Internet did when people were first getting connected. We have barely tapped the kind and type of services that will be developed for fiber-connected homes and businesses because there are currently so few of them. The potential for collaboration and new business growth is huge.</p><p>Fiber is actually one of the best investments a homeowner can make. While it may cost up to $3,000 to bring fiber to your home, studies have shown that the value of your home will rise from $5,000 to $10,000. You will not get that return from remodeling a kitchen or adding a new deck.</p><p>Currently, getting Fiber To The Home is almost a lottery. If you live in a Google city, a city like Danville, Va., Wilson, N.C., or even the WiredRoad region of rural southwest Virginia, you have access to fiber. If not, you are playing a waiting game similar to what happened during the last century when people outside the cities were waiting for electricity.</p><p>Unfortunately, the world moves much faster now, and as many will tell you the U.S. is falling farther behind other countries in getting access to true “big broadband.” It does not seem likely that regulatory relief will occur, so someone needs to step up to the plate. Our best hope lies with a combination of innovative companies, local governments and interested consumers working together.</p><p><em>Image courtesy of Flickr user <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/smemon/12695864505/in/photolist-kkTCcB-gJPZVN-kkTCRT-gJPo75-gJNU6o-ETSZq-gJQDqX-gJQKN6-6pArwA-gJNKs1-8vwpYv-gJNfGr-9XL6o6-fNtLkF-4bZsq7-aDr19-3M9LG-da6oty-9Atv7x-8EYmuc-7AuPwd-7zafaM-ETSZf-9vW7Sx-7LeyfA-c5cVCb-aYbrNi-aYbrK4-aYbrFe-GFGFA-4CpUn-9kCKSP-dKCmZM-dKCp32-dKHNZG-dKHNBS-8RC34-7Qh398-aDr1b-e3uJDj-9wWSUG-dKHQPJ-2L1rP-dKCpGv-gJQdkD-6Yzymi-5b2fbd-dKHQ7A-5GvH1g-dkaz57">Sean MacEntee</a></em></p><p><strong> </strong></p>A simple problem with a complicated answer.http://readwrite.com/2014/07/22/internet-slow-expensive-us
http://readwrite.com/2014/07/22/internet-slow-expensive-usWebTue, 22 Jul 2014 10:00:19 -0700David SobottaSomething To Like About Windows 8.1<!-- tml-version="2" --><p>Windows 8 has received enough negative press, <a href="http://readwrite.com/2013/01/14/the-real-problem-with-the-windows-8-user-interface-and-it-isnt-touch#awesm=~oCWTNVgwW9fqYd">some of it from me</a>, to sink most operating systems. But <a href="http://readwrite.com/2013/02/11/home-virtualization-the-new-power-user#awesm=~oCWTGA8wQfBXcA">having relied on Windows 8</a>&nbsp;for the last 18 months or so, what I have actually grown to like about Microsoft's latest version of Windows might surprise some people.</p><blockquote tml-render-position="right" tml-render-size="medium"><p><strong>See also:&nbsp;<a href="http://readwrite.com/2013/11/29/think-email-is-dead-outside-of-work">Think Email Is Dead Outside Of Work?</a></strong></p></blockquote><p>First, you should know I'm an email junkie. I've been using email since you had to log into a terminal to access your email. The list of email clients that I've used over the years is extensive and includes some memorable ones like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppleLink">AppleLink</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claris_Emailer">Claris Emailer</a>, <a href="http://www.eudora.com/">Eudora</a>, Outlook Express, <a href="http://outlook.com/">Outlook</a>, <a href="https://www.apple.com/support/mac-apps/mail/">Apple Mail</a>, <a href="http://www.ctmdev.com/powermail/">PowerMail</a>, <a href="http://www.postbox-inc.com/">PostBox</a>,<a href="http://www.mozilla.org/thunderbird/"> Thunderbird</a>&nbsp;and most recently <a href="http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/mail-app-tutorial">Windows 8 Mail</a>.</p><p>On top of having used so many email clients, I worked for an email services company, so I know the ins and outs of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Message_Access_Protocol">IMAP </a>and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_Office_Protocol%20">POP </a>email. I was also an early <a href="http://mail.google.com/">Gmail</a> user.</p><p>With so many email clients, I also have more email accounts that I'd care to admit. Some are freebies, some I pay for from <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/%20">Rackspace</a>, and others I set up on my own servers.</p><p>I like to think I'm an email client's worst nightmare. With over a dozen email accounts and years of stored emails, being responsive and staying connected to all of my accounts is a challenge for any piece of software.</p><p>A few years ago, I gave up on Apple's Mail app as my main client because it seemed to choke on my two big Gmail accounts. Still, because of my long history with it, I keep Apple Mail running on my Mac Mini, but it only has my iCloud account and a couple of old Mobile/.Mac accounts running. I also had trouble hooking up Apple Mail to my oldest IMAP account.</p><blockquote tml-render-position="right" tml-render-size="medium"><p><strong>See also: <a href="http://readwrite.com/2014/01/30/how-to-fix-ilemon-mac-apple-imac">How I Fixed An iLemon</a></strong></p></blockquote><p><a href="http://www.postbox-inc.com/">PostBox</a> stepped into Apple Mail's shoes and provided a very reliable experience—at least on Windows, until very recently. The database for PostBox had just gotten too big for my tiny 64GB SSD drive so I first switched webmail clients then eventually to Windows Mail on my Lenovo Yoga.</p><p>I had set up Windows Mail when I bought the Yoga in November 2012, and had basically forgotten it up to that point. I was not impressed with it at the time and couldn't even figure out how to attach a picture. Once in a while, I'd pay attention to the notice of how many emails I had in an account, but that was it.</p><p>This spring I upgraded to Windows 8.1, but I still did not check out the new version of Windows Mail. What finally got me to pay attention to Windows Mail was that oldest IMAP account. When it quit working on PostBox, I assumed the folks had finally just pulled the plug on the server. It had long ago become a free account so I could hardly complain. I tried a number of different security settings on both PostBox in Windows and Thunderbird in Linux. Nothing worked so I migrated anything important and forgot about it. One day, I happened to notice that I was getting new mail in that account in Windows Mail.</p><p></p><div tml-image="ci01b2812870016d19"><figure><img src="http://a4.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,q_80,w_620/MTIyMzAyMTQ4OTU5NTY4NDg2.jpg" /></figure></div><p>That's how I started using Windows Mail.</p><h2>Windows Mail In Practice</h2><p>I found the Windows 8.1 version of Windows Mail to be much improved. I actually like it a lot. I even liked it enough to set it up on my desktop Windows machine, and I'll even go so far as to say I find the user interface very well done.&nbsp;</p><p>I was never a fan of some of the Windows 8 tools magically showing up in the app, but it actually works very well in Windows Mail.&nbsp;The minute that I select text to insert a link, some Windows 8 tools show up at the bottom of the screen—one of them is a tool to insert URLs. If I click on it, a popup window shows up and if I have copied the URL from something, all I have to do is click on "Insert link."</p><p>I find it much superior to going to a pull down menu and selecting "Add Link." It's a small change, but it makes my life easier.</p><p></p><div tml-image="ci01b28128d0006d19"><figure><img src="http://a4.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,q_80,w_620/MTIyMzAyMTUwODM4NzQ3NzUw.jpg" /></figure></div><p>I also really like the way you can browse potential email attachments. The horizontally scrolling window with thumbnails seems very intelligent and fast, and it seems to be an ideal way to view lots of files at once.</p><p>Beyond those little details, I find the automatic saving of drafts and the way the screen is set up for writing and reviewing email to be a very smart and productive use of the screen's real estate.</p><p>I really like the split-screen mode, especially for viewing Windows contacts and writing emails simultaneously. I can see a few things about the person I'm writing to, and sometimes that's a good thing. I was just doing a test email and I got an alert that someone wanted to connect with me on Facebook. It's a nice way for an alert to work.</p><blockquote tml-render-position="right" tml-render-size="medium"><p><strong>See also:&nbsp;<a href="http://readwrite.com/2014/03/20/apple-mac-windows-pc-balance">How I Moved Away From The Mac After Leaving Apple</a></strong></p></blockquote><p>The Windows 8 address book has not been perfect. It linked a few people incorrectly, but it's good enough that I think it might finally make my wife feel like she has her actual address book back. She has softly complained to me in the four years since <a href="http://readwrite.com/2014/03/20/apple-mac-windows-pc-balance">she moved from the Mac</a> that she still misses her Mac address book.</p><p>Finally, it is so easy to click on a corner of the screen and go back and forth from Windows 8 mail to the normal Windows world that I find myself getting more done.</p><p>Windows 8.1 is certainly not perfect, but thanks to the improvements in Windows 8 mail, I see a glimmer of hope in what Windows 8 might be—and it's not nearly as bad as the press once made it out to be.</p><p><em>Image courtesy of Flikr user <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/vernieman/10346570856">Vernon Chan</a></em></p>I'm a big email user, and Windows 8.1 finally gets it right.http://readwrite.com/2014/05/07/windows-8-1-review-microsoft-mail
http://readwrite.com/2014/05/07/windows-8-1-review-microsoft-mailWebWed, 07 May 2014 05:11:00 -0700David SobottaHow I Moved Away From The Mac After Leaving Apple<!-- tml-version="2" --><p>After nearly 20 years, one of the first things I did upon leaving Apple in July 2004 was to have my area associate—who was still an Apple employee—order me an employee-discounted 15" aluminum PowerBook. It was a natural thing.</p><p>Apple products began populating my desk starting in the summer of 1982 when I bought one of the first bundles of Apple II+ machines to arrive in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Taste-Wild-Canadas-Maritimes-ebook/dp/B00BNXMVX2">Maritime Canada</a>. But more than two decades later, in September 2004, just a month after getting my new PowerBook, I ordered myself a Dell Pentium desktop running Windows XP.</p><h2>A Big Transition</h2><p>There were three reasons for my decision to buy a Windows computer: I wanted a platform where I could do some GPS work, I thought I would need Windows experience for my next job, and I wanted to bring up a Linux system, which <a href="http://viewfromthemountain.typepad.com/david_sobotta_weblog/2004/12/technical_war_v.html">I did</a>. (The first real foray into the GPS world would have to wait a few years for the arrival of&nbsp;<a href="http://viewfromthemountain.typepad.com/david_sobotta_weblog/2011/01/my-tracks-another-reason-to-love-my-droid-and-the-android-os.html">Google and Android</a>.)</p><p>Having a Dell system among the collection of Macs&nbsp;in my office&nbsp;was also a way to see how the majority of the computing world was surviving on a platform which I had sold against for years.</p><blockquote tml-render-position="right" tml-render-size="medium"><p><strong>See also: <a href="http://readwrite.com/2014/01/30/how-to-fix-ilemon-mac-apple-imac">How I Fixed An iLemon</a></strong></p></blockquote><p>I needed to learn just how much of "the Apple story" (that had been my life up to that point) was reality, and what was hype. I had no intention of transferring all my work to Windows XP, so that December, I purchased a dual G5 from Apple. At $1,795, I thought it was the best product that I could get my hands on to focus on the graphics, web and photography work that had always been part of my life even as <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009PPGEJ2">Apple's director of federal sales</a>.</p><p>Fast forward to late 2012—my office gets its latest technology refresh. The first product I buy is a first-generation Lenovo Yoga, the second is an I5 Lenovo desktop, and the third is a Mac mini, which is really more of a token Mac than anything else. It's the only other functional Mac in the house besides that old dual G5 purchased way back when. My main laptop for office use was—and still is—a 15” I7 Lenovo laptop.</p><h2>Spurning The Mac</h2><p>My family of five once&nbsp;owned well over a dozen Macintoshes—not counting my collection of old Macs. Strangely enough, no one in my family owns an iPhone and the only iPods are relics stored in drawers.</p><p>So how did someone—who bled rainbow colors alongside his family for so many years, and led arguably one of the most successful enterprise sales teams in Apple's history—end up using a Lenovo Yoga as his favorite travel computer?</p><p>(What's even more amazing is my wife gave up her beloved 12" aluminum Powerbook in February of 2010. Four years later, she remains quite happy with her Windows 7 laptop from 2010, even though she complains every once in awhile about the lack of a Mac address book.)&nbsp;</p><p>There was no conscious effort to move away from Macs, at least in the early years; it's been quite a long journey.&nbsp;When my Powerbook G4 died an early death roughly 18 months after I purchased it, I ordered <a href="http://viewfromthemountain.typepad.com/applepeels/2006/07/the_genius_of_a.html">an Intel MacBook in 2006</a> and&nbsp;<a href="http://viewfromthemountain.typepad.com/applepeels/2010/10/apples-i5-imac-joins-applepeels-nerve-center.html">a 26” I5 iMac</a>&nbsp;in 2010. &nbsp;I had <a href="http://viewfromthemountain.typepad.com/applepeels/2012/12/what-keeps-a-mac-in-my-life.html">good reasons</a> for keeping Macs in my life.</p><blockquote tml-render-position="right" tml-render-size="medium"><p><strong>See also:&nbsp;<a href="http://readwrite.com/2013/01/17/apple-is-no-longer-easy-a-mac-mini-tale-of-woe">Apple Is No Longer Easy: A Mac Mini Tale Of Woe</a></strong></p></blockquote><h2>Living With Windows</h2><p>More than anything, the Mac's fall from the top spot in my digital life was caused by jobs that took me deeper into a predominantly Windows world.</p><p>Windows was required by my job, and Apple's machines were failing on me. Two of my Macs suffered premature hardware failures, and even though my faithful Intel MacBook eventually experienced total death, it still got me through&nbsp;<a href="http://viewfromthemountain.typepad.com/applepeels/2008/04/a-mac-users-con.html">the Windows Vista experience</a>&nbsp;single-handedly.</p><p>Having a deeper understanding of Windows was inevitable with every job I had:</p><ul><li>After Apple, I was a vice president at a small federal contractor that dealt a lot with large system integrators. While my sales team at Apple had a lot of success selling to the scientific community in the federal space, we had only started to touch the federal integration market, with products like Xserve, by the time my Apple career ended. But for the most part, federal integrators and contractors, including the one I worked for, were almost exclusively Windows users, so I bought a Dell laptop in 2005 so as not to be the only Mac user in a room of 50 people.</li><li>The following year, when I started my job as vice president of sales and marketing in an email services startup, I was the only one of 45 employees who used a Mac. The team there was far from old; there were only four employees, myself included, who were over 30 years old. Much of the software we used was web-based, but there were things that were easier to get done on Windows. I eventually ended up carrying two laptops for my work there: my Dell, and my Intel MacBook.</li><li>When I was ready for my next career switch—this time I would tackle the world of real estate—I had already donated my Dell laptop to my daughter so she could finish up her business degree. I was determined to use a Mac for real estate, and with the help of my home Pentium Windows XP system, I managed to do it for almost nine months. At one point, I felt like I was <a href="http://viewfromthemountain.typepad.com/applepeels/2007/04/surviving_maybe.html">thriving in a Windows world with a Mac</a>. &nbsp;&nbsp;</li></ul><p>By October 2007, the reality of living in a Windows-centric world had finally sunk in. Real estate forms were simply unavailable on the Mac, and that was huge for me. The Mac could also no longer print to our office printer—a software issue, no surprise. It simply didn't make any economic sense to buy a more capable Mac laptop just for the sake of running Windows virtually.</p><p>One system I needed to use required running Internet Explorer and something called a "SecurID card." I had my doubts I could get the system to work on my Mac unless I dual-booted it into Windows, but if I did that, I might as well own a Windows computer. So I bought an <a href="http://viewfromthemountain.typepad.com/applepeels/2007/10/on-the-eve-of-a.html">inexpensive HP laptop for my real estate needs</a>.</p><p>For quite some time, I came to work with two laptops. Sometimes I would get a lot of work done while waiting for the HP loaded with Vista to boot; eventually, when Vista got better, I started noticing some problems that gradually eroded my loyalty to the Mac platform.&nbsp;</p><h2>The Windows Advantage</h2><p>By early 2010, my wife’s 12” G4 PowerBook was so slow that even the Washington Post's minimalist webpage wouldn't load. I wanted to buy her a new laptop within a reasonable $1,300 budget, but my Apple friends kept assuring me that no company was actually shipping Intel’s new series processors in their laptops—I would just have to wait for a while.</p><blockquote tml-render-position="right" tml-render-size="medium"><p><strong>See also: <a href="http://readwrite.com/2014/01/29/ipad-pro-os-x-ios">An iPad Running OS X Could Be Apple's Next "Big Idea"</a></strong></p></blockquote><p>I had no intention of buying my wife a premium-priced Mac with an outdated processor (the Intel Core 2 Duo), but around that time&nbsp;I saw a special at Staples for HP laptops with the new Intel processors. I was stunned—my Apple friends told me it wasn't real. I <a href="http://viewfromthemountain.typepad.com/applepeels/2010/02/a-mac-user-tries-windows-7-on-an-intel-i7-laptop.html">ordered my wife a 14” I5 laptop, and got myself a 15” I7 laptop</a>.</p><p>The two HP laptops together cost less than $1,500 and both computers showed up in a few days, even though Apple folks maintained the processors weren't shipping in any products any time soon. It would take a few months before Apple could <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook_Pro">announce similar products</a>—which, of course,&nbsp;were also priced much higher.</p><p>After a year, our Windows 7 experience was flawless. In February of 2011, I wrote <a href="http://viewfromthemountain.typepad.com/applepeels/2011/02/a-mac-user-reports-after-one-year-on-windows-7.html">a post</a> where I said this:</p><blockquote><p>First off Windows 7 is an exceptionally reliable operating system. It is just a few days shy of a year since my wife and I both started using Windows 7. There have been no problems either hardware or software related with the systems. &nbsp;That is no as in none. That is a pretty heady accomplishment for a brand new operating system running on new processors.&nbsp;The systems have not crashed, locked up, or misbehaved in way that I have been able to determine.</p></blockquote><p>That Windows laptop turned out to be such positive experience that I quit using my MacBook altogether, with the exception of iPhoto, thanks to its bigger hard drive and more robust memory.</p><p>The Apple addict I am, I eventually relapsed in the fall of 2010 and&nbsp;ordered&nbsp;<a href="http://viewfromthemountain.typepad.com/applepeels/2010/10/apples-i5-imac-joins-applepeels-nerve-center.html">an I5 iMac</a>—I had started working on a project involving CAD and web development, so I felt I needed a Mac—but that particular computer is when the wheels really started coming off the Apple wagon.</p><p>The iMac and I never hit it off. I had to buy the huge 26" model to get an I5 processor and I&nbsp;hated the positioning of the SD slot right under the DVD slot. Less than a year later, in summer 2011,&nbsp;problems with iPhoto caused me to <a href="http://viewfromthemountain.typepad.com/applepeels/2011/07/i-pull-the-plug-on-apples-iphoto-at-version-915.html">pull the plug on my favorite Macintosh application, iPhoto, altogether</a>.</p><p>In January 2012, I bought my first Lenovo—an I7 laptop with a 15" screen, 8GB of RAM and Office—for under $1,000. That Lenovo laptop became my main computer in the face of my dying iMac. To&nbsp;this day, it is still a workhorse in my office. I eventually handed down my older HP laptop to one of&nbsp;my daughters, whose lampshade iMac was dying a slow and painful death at the time.</p><p>By spring of 2012, my 16-month-old iMac was&nbsp;<a href="http://viewfromthemountain.typepad.com/applepeels/2012/07/the-mysteries-of-apple-mobileme-icloud.html">not running well</a>&nbsp;and none of my Apple system engineer friends could offer any solutions. It was not long before I was running the iMac off an external hard drive and I eventually ended up writing&nbsp;<a href="http://readwrite.com/2012/12/20/my-imac-has-turned-into-an-ilemon-and-it-makes-me-concerned-about-apple">a ReadWrite article about the computer I called my "iLemon."</a></p><h2>Striking A Balance</h2><p></p><div tml-image="ci01b280c660046d19" tml-render-position="left" tml-render-size="medium"><figure><img src="http://a4.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,q_80,w_620/MTIyMzAxNzI4MzIxMjAzNDgx.jpg" /></figure></div><p>When I went to buy a travel laptop in late 2012, I could not find a Mac that had an integrated SD card for under $1,000. So, I bought an I5 Lenovo Yoga for $999 (which comes with a bonus—a touchscreen), as well as a $479 Lenovo desktop to run all of my photo editing tools and applications like Lightroom and Picasa.</p><p>I still use the Macintosh for certain things but I have to admit <a href="http://viewfromthemountain.typepad.com/applepeels/2013/06/why-i-will-likely-pass-on-the-new-mac-pro.html">being a Mac user has become too much trouble</a>. While my son and I recently resurrected my I5 iMac, we did so only so I could own a backup Mac system in case my Mac Mini fails. That computer, after all, experienced&nbsp;<a href="http://readwrite.com/2013/01/22/mac-mini-tale-of-woe-part-deux">some challenges</a> before OS X Mavericks came along, but my new job requires a system that runs Pages and Keynote—Apple's answers to Microsoft&nbsp;Word and PowerPoint, respectively—so I can't rely on Windows completely just yet.&nbsp;</p><h2>My Modern Setup</h2><p>If you look at my desk today, you'll see the I7 Lenovo laptop, the Mac mini, and the Lenovo I5 desktop. On another table, you'll see a hardly-used but newly-resurrected I5 26” iMac.</p><p>It is perhaps the ultimate irony that I now work for a company, <a href="http://wideopennetworks.us/">WideOpen Networks</a>, that is Mac-centric. &nbsp;We create our proposals in Pages and our presentations in Keynote.&nbsp;</p><p>Even though I'm back in a Mac environment, which is how I started my journey, there are still things I like better on Windows. Some of these things I'll choose not to mention for fear of inciting the wrath of Mac users everywhere, since many of those people will refuse to believe anything can possibly be better in the world of Windows.&nbsp;</p><blockquote tml-render-position="right" tml-render-size="medium"><p><strong>See also: <a href="http://readwrite.com/2014/03/12/apple-ios-8-fix-maps">How iOS 8 Will Fix Apple Maps</a></strong></p></blockquote><p>My most recent Kindle book, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00I0B1TSS">100 Pictures, 1000 Words, A Crystal Coast Year</a></em>, was written and compiled in Microsoft Word on my Lenovo desktop running&nbsp;Windows 8.1. The images were all catalogued and edited using Lightroom on my Windows desktop. I still needed my Mac for a few things—I resized all my images on <a href="http://www.pixelmator.com/">Pixelmator</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;edited the filtered HTML for the Kindle using <a href="http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/">TextWrangler</a>—but many of these things could have been easily done on Windows.&nbsp;</p><p>Obviously I am not your normal computer—<a href="http://readwrite.com/2013/02/11/home-virtualization-the-new-power-user">check out these pictures of my desktop and you'll see what I mean</a>—but my transition from Mac to Windows was also affected, and hastened, by decisions made at Apple.</p><p>Apple makes high-quality products, I can't argue otherwise. However, my personal experience with Apple products is that they've failed more than the Windows products I've purchased since leaving Apple. Call it luck of the draw, but the only Apple product I've owned in the last decade that hasn't any problems is my dual G5 tower, which still works fine for a nine-year-old computer.</p><p>My career at Apple revolved around making customers happy, and keeping them that way. And even though I was challenged to solve some of the Mac problems that came to the attention of Steve Jobs, I'm still not accustomed to seeing Macs experiencing as many problems as they do.</p><p>Many of the issues I've experienced are specific and circumstantial, namely having to do with changes in the interface and efficacy of Apple's photo apps for the Mac. But in general, for Web-centric people like me, Apple’s struggles to figure out the Web—from to .Mac, MobileMe and iCloud—have been frustrating to say the least. These changes have cost me <a href="http://viewfromthemountain.typepad.com/applepeels/2012/07/the-mysteries-of-apple-mobileme-icloud.html">a lot of time and work</a> rescuing images and webpages that Apple decided that they could not longer host.</p><p>The other issue with Apple, to me, is its attitude. I would've felt better about my failing products if Apple was willing to repair the problems.&nbsp;When I was at the company, I held great expectations for our products and made certain that customers served by my team stood behind Apple's products. <a href="http://readwrite.com/2012/11/19/i-know-tim-cook-and-admire-him-but-he-and-apple-could-do-better">Unfortunately</a>, I am not certain I feel the same commitment from the new Apple.&nbsp;</p><blockquote tml-render-position="right" tml-render-size="medium"><p><strong>See also: <a href="http://readwrite.com/2013/11/21/why-less-might-actually-be-more-with-pages-5">Why Less Might Actually Be More With Pages 5</a></strong></p></blockquote><p>What's worse is that Apple's poor attitude towards hardware issues rubs off on its customers.</p><p>Amidst the series of problems that ensued with nearly every Mac I purchased over the years, I still hung to Apple's platform. But for some reason, there are a number of Mac users out there that&nbsp;will blame you for the problem, regardless what it is, and heap shame upon you for suggesting the world's richest company should solve a hardware/software problem that <em>you</em> caused. It is radically different mindset from the worlds of Windows or Linux, where most people tend to relate to your problems and end up blaming Microsoft, or perhaps the hardware manufacturer.</p><p>In the end, technology products are a bit like sausages and hot dogs. Most of us love to eat one now and then, but we'd rather not know how they're made or what goes into them.&nbsp;I still remember how, at Apple, we met federal requirements for government laptops by having Powerbooks assembled and tested in China, but then taken apart and shipped to California for reassembly. Maybe I just know too much about Apple and its products to be able to enjoy the taste these days.</p><p>All that said, all is not lost for the Mac. I prefer Mavericks much more than the last two previous iterations of OS X, and like any technology company, Apple is always&nbsp;one magical product away from getting customers to forget their old problems and fall in love all over again.</p><p><em>Images by Madeleine Weiss for ReadWrite</em></p>Take it from someone who knows Apple inside and out: The Mac can't do it all.http://readwrite.com/2014/03/20/apple-mac-windows-pc-balance
http://readwrite.com/2014/03/20/apple-mac-windows-pc-balanceCloudThu, 20 Mar 2014 06:11:00 -0700David SobottaIt’s Time To Give Up On Swiping Credit Cards<!-- tml-version="2" --><p>Swipe, sign, and pay—it's a simple ritual that we may perform several times a day with our ubiquitous plastic credit and debit cards.</p><p>But as the <a href="http://readwrite.com/2013/12/31/atm-cards-debit-cards-credit-cards-hackers-skimmers">Target security breach showed us</a>, the classic magnetic stripe, which shares our account number with a merchant, is a dangerously insecure technology. It's on its way out—but it can't go fast enough.</p><p>Here in the United States, we're about to get entirely new kinds of physical cards already in use overseas. We are also on the cusp of a revolution that might see smartphones play a key role in how we pay for things. It all adds up to a lot of confusion. And it's not clear we're actually getting any safer.</p><h2>What Will Replace The Stripe?</h2><p>The problem with the magnetic stripe is that once someone else has your card, they have all the secure information they need to compromise it. The full 16-digit account number is embossed on the card. It’s also encoded in the magnetic stripe in a format that’s easy for anyone with the right kind of device to read—and hence copy. There’s one more security feature, the Card Verification Value, or CVV2 number—which is printed on the back of the card. Oh, and a clerk might check your signature and your driver's license.</p><p>As the Target hack exposed, there’s another problem with these cards: They transmit your account number—and, in the case of debit cards, your PIN—to merchants. We used to think this was safe, that merchants would protect their internal systems from hacking. Thanks to Target, and previous incidents of mass card theft like the <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/17853440/ns/technology_and_science-security/t/tj-maxx-data-theft-worse-first-reported/">T.J. Maxx hack a decade ago</a>, we now know better.</p><blockquote tml-render-position="right" tml-render-size="medium"><p><strong>See also: <a href="http://readwrite.com/2013/12/31/atm-cards-debit-cards-credit-cards-hackers-skimmers">The Peril of Plastic: The Problems With Debit And Credit Cards Are Deeper Than We Thought</a></strong></p></blockquote><p>There are two main contenders to replace that thoroughly broken system: chip-and-PIN swipe cards and contactless, or NFC (near-field communication), cards.</p><p>Chip-and-PIN cards are a descendant of the smart cards I'm familiar with from my time selling government systems for Apple. There's a chip in the card that communicates with a chip in newer card-processing machines, or terminals.&nbsp;NFC uses short-range radio waves to communicate with terminals, which means you can just tap your card to pay. You'll sometimes see both features in newly issued cards.</p><p>Chip-and-PIN and NFC both have an advantage over the magnetic stripe: At least with the latest versions of these cards, you’re not transmitting an actual credit-card number, as you do with a magnetic stripe. Instead, they transmit a “token”—a one-time-use number that banks and card processors can match up with your account on the other end to process the transaction, but that doesn’t reveal your account number, even to the merchant.</p><p>Here's the problem: New cards with these more-secure payment features will carry—you guessed it—an insecure magnetic stripe for “backwards compatibility" with ATMs, gas pumps, and other payment devices that are costly to upgrade. We’re paying for convenience with our safety.</p><p>I found this out myself when I talked to American Express the other day. The customer-support rep said they would be happy to send me a new chip-and-PIN credit card. &nbsp;However, it would come with my information encoded on the magnetic stripe. &nbsp;They did assure me that I have zero liability for fraud.</p><p>Someone's going to pay for fraud, though, and it's likely to be retailers. Right now, retailers are largely protected if they follow the rules around swiping magnetic-stripe cards. That will change once chip-and-PIN cards are widely available: Banks and card processors will shift fraud liability to retailers who let their customers swipe the old-fashioned way.</p><p>Here's the other irony of this transition: American Express and a lot of other card issuers are favoring an approach called "chip-and-signature.” That means that while you'll dip your card in a reader instead of swiping it, you’ll still approve transactions by signing a piece of paper instead of entering a PIN.</p><p>It’s not hard to see why they’re doing this. Chip-and-signature might work better in, say, a restaurant where the waiter brings you the bill. It will also require a lot less retraining of store clerks (and consumers). Again, though, we're going to pay for the convenience with our security.</p><h2>Just Ditch The Card</h2><p>You’re seeing a pattern here: Adding security features to a physical card makes the simple, fast swipe of a card a needlessly complicated process. Yet we just can’t rely on the magnetic stripe the way we used to.</p><p>Some people have tried replacing the card with your phone. But this has been riddled with complexity, too. Google has had a big failure with trying to get people to use Google Wallet in retail stores. Isis, a joint venture backed by wireless carriers, has similarly flopped.</p><p>I’m not convinced that replacing the card with a phone is a great idea. That might be okay if your phone doesn't get stolen, is securely protected from unauthorized use, and can be remotely wiped clean before someone has time to crack into it. But I need to hear more to be convinced.</p><p>Ultimately we may need a system that combines cards and phones. For example, what if I could tap a card and then enter a one-time PIN sent to my smartphone? That seems more secure than using the same PIN every time—we know that fraudsters have hacked ATM-card PINs to get into our bank accounts.</p><p>Ultimately, what we may realize is we don’t really need a card at all. If all the card does is carry our account number, we have machines that do a good job of storing numbers for us. And if we can't trust retailers with our credit-card details, maybe we shouldn’t be giving them a piece of plastic printed with our account number in the first place.</p><p>The way of the future may be carrying out commerce in physical stores the same way we do on Amazon and iTunes—we click "buy” and the retailer charges our account, with the details walled off in many layers of digital security. If banks carry out their current plans, they’ll make buying things in stores more complicated without making them any more secure—and that may be the thing that kills off the magnetic-stripe card for good.</p><p><em>Photo by <a href="http://shutterstock.com/">Shutterstock</a></em></p>The magnetic stripe is a dangerous, dead-end technology—but banks and merchants are keeping it alive, to our peril.http://readwrite.com/2014/02/27/credit-cards-magnetic-stripe-swiping
http://readwrite.com/2014/02/27/credit-cards-magnetic-stripe-swipingWebThu, 27 Feb 2014 04:59:00 -0800David SobottaHow I Fixed An iLemon<!-- tml-version="2" --><p>About a year ago, I wrote about how <a href="http://readwrite.com/2012/12/20/my-imac-has-turned-into-an-ilemon-and-it-makes-me-concerned-about-apple">my iMac had turned into an iLemon</a>. But few Apple fans understood my frustration with my iMac and its iProblems, which started less than 18 months after I purchased it.</p><p>A year after I gave up on the iMac and retired it to my equipment storage closet, my son and I decided to resurrect it.&nbsp;It was not an operation for the faint of heart, mind you, but the effort—and why I ended up going through the trouble—offers some insight into the world of Apple and perhaps a hint of caution for those of you who do not live in the urban metropolises that Apple and its repairs shops so obviously favor.</p><h2>Behind The Scenes</h2><p>Here's a bit of background about me: At Apple, where I was a manager for over a decade, I completely bought into the belief that Macs were better made than Windows machines. However, on more occasions than I could count, it was a problem from a faithful Macintosh user that ended up being my challenge to solve. Sometimes, these problems were referred to me by executives; other times, unhappy customers would simply find me through people in my account teams.</p><blockquote tml-render-position="right" tml-render-size="medium"><p><strong>See more:&nbsp;<a href="http://readwrite.com/2012/12/20/my-imac-has-turned-into-an-ilemon-and-it-makes-me-concerned-about-apple">My iMac Has Turned Into An iLemon, And It Makes Me Concerned About Apple</a></strong></p></blockquote><p>But not once during my 20 years at Apple did I ever feel it was not in the best interests of the company to solve a customer’s problem. Sometimes we solved problems with our local budgets, but we'd often get the folks in Apple’s executive relations team involved to facilitate matters. I never sent them a problem they didn't resolve in a matter of days—sometimes just a few hours. Apple’s extra effort to keep customers happy was perhaps a key reason the company survived some of its darkest days before Steve returned.</p><p>Now that I'm just another Apple customer, I can explain what has happened to me. But as a former Apple manager, I can also highlight how my experience was different than what I saw from Apple for many years.</p><h2>The Macintosh Of My Discontent</h2><p>The iMac I <a href="http://viewfromthemountain.typepad.com/applepeels/2010/10/apples-i5-imac-joins-applepeels-nerve-center.html">purchased in October 2010</a> was an expensive computer at over $1,800, but I bought it because I was priced out of Apple’s tower line. I actually paid more for my iMac than I did for my nine-year-old dual G5 tower ($1,795), which still runs quite well.</p><p>But that 2010 iMac has been the most problematic Mac in my life, by far.</p><p>I was able to update a&nbsp;couple of&nbsp;<a href="http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/specs/imac_800_fp.html">lamp shade iMacs</a>&nbsp;for my ladies of the house, so I consider myself a competent hardware person. But by spring 2012, I was having some serious software and hardware problems with that iMac. By summertime, I backed up my data and started booting the computer off an external Firewire 800 drive. The SD slot on the computer also started experiencing intermittent failures. But among all the problems that got under my skin,&nbsp;I found out Apple had an extended warranty program on Western Digital hard drives like the one in my iMac, but the serial number of my bad hard drive was out of the range covered by the extended warranty.</p><p>This was a bitter pill since the first Mac laptop I'd purchased after leaving Apple had a bad lower memory slot on its logic board and was also not covered by Apple's extended warranty. These were just the kind of issues we used to handle so effectively with Apple’s executive relations program.</p><blockquote tml-render-position="right" tml-render-size="medium"><p><strong>See more: <a href="http://readwrite.com/2014/01/29/ipad-pro-os-x-ios">An iPad Running OS X Could Be Apple's Next "Big Idea"</a></strong></p></blockquote><p>When I looked for a service center to fix my iMac, I was not surprised that Apple had made so little progress in covering service whitespace in the eight years since I left the company—"whitespace" is basically an area where there is no computer reseller or repair available. Getting Apple to worry about anything other than major metro areas was always a challenge in my days at Apple, and little seemed to have changed.</p><p>Since I live on the coast of North Carolina—<a href="http://www.crystalcoastlife.com/images/davidsfavoritespots.jpg">ten minutes from the beach</a>—the nearest Apple repair facility is over three hours away in a Raleigh shopping mall. But even that store is an Apple Store; small Apple resellers that once helped Apple in its early days have not fared so well recently. Spending 12 hours during the busy holiday season driving to get my iMac fixed was just not an option; HP, by comparison, has an authorized service center less than five miles from my house.</p><p>But I really needed a true repair center: Changing the hard drive in my iMac would require pulling out its 27" LCD screen, which was something I did not want to tackle on my own. With that in mind,&nbsp;I sent an email to a high-ranking Apple executive, who happened to be my former boss at the company. The next day, I got a call from a very nice lady from Apple’s executive relations team who assured me they would fix my problem.</p><p>I spent several hours researching my issues and on the phone with one of Apple's "top troubleshooters," who also assured me all would be fixed. But after I did not hear back from them for a week, I emailed my executive relations contact. She called back, but her message was that my iMac was broken and I needed to take it to a repair center. Executive relations, rather than solving the problem, only managed to waste several hours of my time.</p><p>I wondered if publishing my book about my sales career at Apple (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Pomme-Company-David-Sobotta-ebook/dp/B009PPGEJ2">The Pomme Company</a>)&nbsp;one month prior to these events had irritated the folks pulling the strings for executive relations. But it seemed a little too ridiculous to imagine Apple could actually be rattled by a book that did not reveal any secrets and whose content had never been challenged by Apple.</p><h2>Rejuvenating The iLemon</h2><p>Fast forward to Thanksgiving 2013: My son, a former Apple technician, announced he was coming to visit. I asked his advice on SSDs and told him I wanted his help bringing the iMac back to life. He agreed, and, at his suggestion, I ordered a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Series-120GB-internal-MZ-7TD120BW/dp/B009NHAF06">120 GB Samsung 840 EVO Drive from Amazon</a> and a special <a href="http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/DIYIM27SSD11/">SSD iMac installation kit from OWC</a>. The two items set me back about $163, but the installation kit included <a href="http://www.crystalcoastlife.com/images/otherworldimacssdkit.jpg">some interesting tools</a>. So while the ladies finished up Thanksgiving cooking, my son and I decided to give the iMac restoration project a try.</p><p>We ran into a fair number of issues—the OWC kit came with <a href="http://www.crystalcoastlife.com/images/owcimackitwarnings.jpg">some dire warnings</a>&nbsp;about returning the unopened kit if its video tutorial made you uncomfortable, plus the link to the video didn't work initially—but we remained committed.</p><p>Eventually, after finding a viable video tutorial and using&nbsp;<a href="http://www.crystalcoastlife.com/images/binderclipforweb.jpg">a couple of big binder clips</a>,&nbsp;we lifted and removed&nbsp;<a href="http://www.crystalcoastlife.com/images/nudeimac.jpg">the iMac's LCD</a>, and&nbsp;things went quickly from there. My son pulled out the iMac's old drive and installed <a href="http://www.crystalcoastlife.com/images/ssdadapterwithssdinimac.jpg">the new SSD with a special bracket</a>. We cleaned the fans in the computer with compressed air and also checked the SD slot for loose wires, which was the diagnosis of the problem from Apple's executive relations. Of course, there were no loose wires.</p><blockquote tml-render-position="right" tml-render-size="medium"><p><strong>See more: <a href="http://readwrite.com/2013/01/17/apple-is-no-longer-easy-a-mac-mini-tale-of-woe">Apple Is No Longer Easy: A Mac Mini Tale Of Woe</a></strong></p></blockquote><p>Once the iMac was reassembled—my son is a veteran of many laptop repairs so this was achieved relatively easily—it was my job to get the system running again. Fortunately I still had the external drive I used back in 2012 so I booted the system with it and ran Disk Tools to format the SSD. Thankfully, upgrading&nbsp;to Mavericks and migrating my applications and user info from&nbsp;<a href="http://readwrite.com/2013/11/11/state-of-the-os-three-operating-systems-three-upgrades">my Mac Mini</a>&nbsp;went smoothly from there.</p><p>Once that was all done, I noticed that the iMac's fans were running full blast. I searched the Web for a software solution and found one that charged $35 for the software. It seemed excessive so I found another solution, <a href="http://exirion.net/">SSD Fan Control</a>, which was free but I donated $10 to the author for good measure.</p><p>After installing SSD Fan Control, all seems to be working well on my 2010 iMac, including the SD slot, which I had always suspected was a software issue.</p><p>If you own a Mac, are looking to repair it or even purchase a new one, here are a few suggestions I'd make based off my experience:</p><ul><li><strong>If you are buying a Mac, factor in <a href="https://getsupport.apple.com/ServiceOptionAction.action">the location of the nearest repair center</a>.</strong> All computers, even Macs, are susceptible to problems. But not all service centers are created equal. Don't trust your Mac to just anyone.</li></ul><ul><li><strong>Your Mac, depending on which you choose, may or may not have a better hard drive than a Windows machine that costs you much less.</strong> Macs are now made with many of the same industry standard parts as other computers, and you don't need to be a technical genius to replace a SATA II drive in many computers—upgrading a hard drive is one of the things I've done most often to keep my computers functional for years on end. However, this procedure is not so easy on recent iMacs, so you might consider local repair centers around you if you're intent on buying an Apple computer and upgrading it.</li></ul><ul><li><strong>Apple’s executive relations team is not as good at solving problems as it used to be, at least in my experience.</strong> In the case of one well-known Mac user having trouble with his laptop, the customer paid to have his computer fixed three times at an Apple Store, but it still didn't work. Executive relations never managed to fix his Mac, but they did return some of the money he'd spent on ineffective repairs. Like me, this customer eventually solved his problem by buying a new Mac—that’s probably Apple’s preferred solution anyway. In the early days when Apple had much less money, the company would have just shipped him a new laptop and considered it a good investment at keeping a long-time customer in the fold.</li></ul><ul><li><strong>Manufacturers' warranty extension programs are based on serial numbers, all the time.</strong> However, it is an inexact science and having a number very close to the ones covered should get some consideration towards repair. Apple didn’t—and doesn't—do that. I will leave it up to readers to decide why a company with billions of dollars in the bank wouldn’t at least cough up a new hard drive that would cost them under $100 for the sake of keeping its customers happy.</li></ul><ul><li><strong>Apple knows how to design systems that are easy to repair, but it hasn't happened recently.</strong> There has never been an easier system to repair than <a href="http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Power+Mac+G5+Hard+Drive+Replacement/1952">Apple’s Dual G5 tower</a>, but since then, Macs have become extremely difficult to upgrade, fix, or repair.&nbsp;Apple could come up with an iMac design that allows for some user service if it wanted to do, but without an access door to the hard drive, I would not recommend anyone buys one without first understanding that upgrading would be an expensive endeavor.</li></ul><p>Would I recommend people try what my son and I did? No—it was not easy and my son works with computers for a living. If all you have ever done is add some RAM or perform a 10-minute hard drive swap, you'll find that working inside a Mac, especially an iMac, is a completely different ball game.</p>Repairing a Mac is no simple task—take it from someone who worked at Apple for 20 years.http://readwrite.com/2014/01/30/how-to-fix-ilemon-mac-apple-imac
http://readwrite.com/2014/01/30/how-to-fix-ilemon-mac-apple-imacCloudThu, 30 Jan 2014 06:04:00 -0800David SobottaThe Perils of Plastic: The Problems With Debit And Credit Cards Are Deeper Than We Thought <!-- tml-version="2" --><div tml-image="ci01b2790ce0036d19" tml-render-position="center" tml-render-size="large"><figure><img src="http://a5.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,q_80,w_620/MTIyMjkzMjM0NzU0OTQwMTg1.jpg" /></figure></div><p>One night, a decade ago, I was on a sales trip. My wife called me up to complain about the $1,700 dinner that I had enjoyed in Bangkok. Of course she was mostly concerned because she knew that I was in Washington, DC, not Thailand. A copy of my credit card had made it there, however. The next day. Someone using my fake card also tried to buy over $2,000 in antiques in Singapore. Fortunately, the credit-card folks were on top of the situation and my only real inconvenience was waiting a few days for a new credit card to show up.</p><p>That time I was a victim of one of the then-high-tech pocketable skimmers that unscrupulous employees used while settling your bill at a restaurant. That incident happened long after most businesses quit using carbon-copy credit-card receipts where we had to worry about tearing up the copies that carried our full card number.</p><p>Fast forward ten years, and things have gotten worse, not better. The New York Times recently reported that <a href="http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/18/target-looking-into-security-breach/">Target is investigating a huge security breach</a>. According to a <a href="http://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/12/sources-target-investigating-data-breach/">December 19 update</a> on the Target problem by security reporter Brian Krebs, as many as “40 million credit and debit card accounts may have been impacted between Nov. 27 and Dec. 15, 2013.” After first claiming that ATM PINs weren't involved, Target later conceded they were stolen, too.</p><h2>A Hack On Small-Town America</h2><p>If you have read some of <a href="http://readwrite.com/author/david-sobotta">my articles on ReadWrite</a>, you might know that I live in fairly rural area along the North Carolina coast. I have joked that <a href="http://readwrite.com/2013/11/29/think-email-is-dead-outside-of-work">putting a hand-lettered sheet at the main intersection</a> is a better way of getting information broadcast in our county than Twitter.</p><p>Our area is one of those places where you likely recognize the cashier at the grocery store and some places they even remember your name. It is not a place that you think might be a target for high-tech crime, but it turns out that we were an extremely inviting target for organized criminals.</p><p>A very large number of area residents were victimized in the last few months. Some estimates suggest that hundreds of people in the area had their ATM cards compromised in recent weeks. That is a lot of folks when the largest town in the area has 3,600 year-round residents. The issue became very personal when in the space of a week both my wife’s and my ATM card numbers were used fraudulently.</p><p>This came on top of a credit-card compromise that snared a rarely used card just a month ago. In dealing with these situations, we got a lot of misleading information. Multiple people who were helping us fix the problem claimed that sophisticated new skimmers could read the magnetic stripe on your card without it even being out of your pocket.</p><p>I did some research on the Internet and found the information available to be almost as confusing. Just to make us feel better as we were trying to understand the situation, we ordered some credit-card protector sleeves and a couple of blocker cards that we could carry in our wallets. I suspected these were useless, designed to protect the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine-archive/2011/june/money/credit-card-fraud/rfid-credit-cards/index.htm">RFID-enabled cards</a>&nbsp;that I don't even have. However, when you have three card numbers stolen in a short space of time, you start looking for solutions quickly and hope that something will work.</p><p>What really shocked us was that our ATM cards which were compromised were from a bank that does not even have a branch in the area. I only used my card in the four local grocery stores and my ATM card never leaves my hand. Also each time I was careful when using my PIN. My wife’s card theft was even scarier in that the only time she used it in months was for a small transaction in the local US Post Office when she pulled out the wrong card.</p><p>Shortly after we finally resolved our issues with the bank, an article was published in the local newspaper. It suggested that much of the card-number theft might have happened with skimmers on gas pumps.</p><p>That was the final straw that convinced me that we were not hearing the full story. I called the regional Secret Service office—that agency is involved in both <a href="http://www.secretservice.gov/whoweare.shtml">protecting the President and investigating financial crimes</a>—and talked to the agent that was handling the investigation. He confirmed my suspicions: The problem is far worse than we imagined.</p><p>While there are no real answers yet in our area, it appears that some computer systems have been compromised either at stores or in the companies handling the processing of card transactions. In other words, a company involved in the flow of payments has been hacked. It could be more than one company. The computer hacking has exposed everyone whose cards are going through those systems. The thieves are using the ATM card information in a way that does not require the PINs.</p><p>As the agent explained it to me, what happens once the thieves have stolen a bunch of numbers from a company is that they print gift cards with their name on them and our billing information on the magnetic stripe. He said they rarely bother with printing up credit cards anymore.</p><p>So here is what we have learned.</p><ul><li>ATM cards with their current security are too dangerous to use. The Secret Service agent I talked to quit using his years ago. We no longer use ours. They stay in a secure place in our home. If a thief gets your ATM card, they can clean your bank account out and it can take weeks to fix the problem.</li><li>Credit card issuers are smarter than regular banks when it comes to fraud. When someone tried to do a $7.01 trial purchase using our compromised credit-card number, we got an automated call from the credit card company 30 minutes after the transaction because they thought it was fraud. The transaction never went through.</li><li>When someone tried a similar transaction with my compromised ATM card, we caught it ourselves and called the bank. I had to fill out a fraud affidavit and fax it back to the bank. It took 10 days to get back our money.</li><li>The only reason a $1,400 fraudulent transaction did not go through on my wife’s compromised ATM card was that we only had $1,300 in the account.</li><li>The standard response from the companies is that someone is reading your card number while the card is still in your pocket. That is probably not the case.</li></ul><h2>What We Can Do</h2><p>I asked the Secret Service agent for some advice—aside from just not using ATM cards, period.</p><p>He said he always tests the card-reading device on a gas pump to make certain it is part of the pump and not an attachment. He also looks for anything suspicious before swiping his credit card in a store. He said if you must use an ATM machine, you should only use a trusted one at your local bank. The banks check those daily.</p><p>He also recommended checking your credit-card balances and your bank statement as often as you can, probably once every 24 hours. He also confirmed the online security precautions that most of us are already practicing such as being very careful about downloading any software that you do not trust and avoiding clicking on links that might be suspicious. He basically said that you might as well accept the fact that your cards will be compromised and be ready for it. He said his credit cards had been compromised a number of times.</p><p>We were lucky this time and did not lose any money. We have gone back to cash now that our ATM cards have been replaced. The new ones have never been used. I carry only two credit cards in my wallet and even though I suspect the card sleeves do nothing for non-RFID cards, my two credit cards are in them.</p><p>As far as RFID cards, I am not interested in one. I have read about some <a href="http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Digital-pickpockets-using-technology-to-steal-credit-cards-208613001.html">clever smartphone software</a> that uses some of the newest smart phones to read your RFID card information. I do not need more risks in my wallet.</p><p>Europeans do make use of make use of&nbsp;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_and_PIN">chip-and-PIN cards</a>. Those have their own problems—for starters, they're completely unsuitable for e-commerce and mobile payments. And&nbsp;I suspect their protections don't help when the thieves manage to crack into companies processing the transactions.&nbsp;</p><p>Right now cash sounds like a good low-tech solution to me. Maybe the banks should start hiring more tellers if they're not going to fix this problem.</p><p><em>Image courtesy of&nbsp;<a href="http://shutterstock.com/">Shutterstock</a></em></p>It's no longer about skimmers at the gas station. The Target hack shows our payment systems are in big trouble.http://readwrite.com/2013/12/31/atm-cards-debit-cards-credit-cards-hackers-skimmers
http://readwrite.com/2013/12/31/atm-cards-debit-cards-credit-cards-hackers-skimmersWebTue, 31 Dec 2013 05:02:00 -0800David SobottaThink Email Is Dead Outside Of Work?<!-- tml-version="2" --><div tml-image="ci01b27a3eb0018266" tml-render-position="center" tml-render-size="large"><figure><img src="http://a3.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,q_80,w_620/MTIyMjk0NTQ4MjA5NjkxOTI5.jpg" /></figure></div><p>A 2012 Harvard Business School study, “<a href="http://hbr.org/2013/06/e-mail-not-dead-evolving/">E-Mail: Not Dead, Evolving</a>,” found “communication between individuals—the original intent of e-mail—isn’t even listed in the top five activities” of how we use email today.</p><p>I have worked in the world of technology since 1982 and even worked as the vice president of an email services company. I tend to lean pretty heavily on email in my work world, but I have noticed how its use is changing in my personal life.</p><p>My most technologically literate friend, Stephen, and I often communicate by Twitter. Some friends who used to send me emails now mostly communicate with me by comments on my Facebook feed. Some even presume that I might stoop to reading Facebook email which I listed as one of the <a href="http://readwrite.com/2013/07/12/10-things-the-tech-industry-should-fix-before-vacation#awesm=~ooALX5n2cB80S9">ten things that the tech industry should fix</a>.</p><p>I have found that my thirty-something friends and family prefer to text me on my smart-phone. I am okay with that since I found the <a href="http://mightytext.net/">MightyText</a> app that lets me send and receive text messages from my Google Chrome browser and on my tablet.</p><p>My personal reality seemed to be shaping up to a handful of people outside of work who still communicate with me by email. Even some of them are only responding to emails that I send. The golden age of personal email seemed to be receding into the mists of time.</p><p>It is different in the business world, where stats show that <a href="http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/35475.asp#multiview">48% of consumers prefer email</a> as the communication with their brands. That explains why I have spent the last week trying to decide between <a href="http://www.constantcontact.com/">Constant Contact</a> and <a href="http://mailchimp.com/">MailChimp</a> as email marketing platforms.</p><h2>Can Email Be The Great Equalizer?</h2><p>About six months ago, two things happened to change the dynamic that emails are dying as a form of communication in my personal life. First I got elected to the board of directors of our homeowners association (HOA). Second, our minister decided that communication between the committees led by the elders of the church would go go electronic.</p><p>One of the reasons I got elected to the HOA board was the hope that I would create an online calendar and perhaps establish email communication between the board and homeowners. I did end up doing all of that but it turned out to be the easy part of the volunteer job.</p><p>At the church, I was already in charge of our website, and the communications committee.</p><p>Together, these two events gave me a completely new perspective and perhaps a hope that email for communication between people outside of business still has some life even if it will not be as glamorous as the earlier days of email.</p><p>Most of us in the technology world work in environments where we share files on a regular basis. At <a href="http://wideopennetworks.us/">WideOpen Networks</a>, my day job, we use <a href="http://www.skype.com/">Skype</a>, <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/">Dropbox</a>, and <a href="https://highrisehq.com/">Highrise</a> to share a lot of <a href="https://www.apple.com/mac/pages/">Pages</a> files. When I am writing an article for ReadWrite, I often write the article in <a href="http://docs.google.com/">Google Docs</a> and I can usually just attach the file directly through <a href="https://trello.com/">Trello</a>, the content management solution which we use or upload a rich text format (RTF) document to a Trello card.</p><p>In both work cases, I am dealing with folks who understand files and things like Dropbox, <a href="https://www.box.com/">Box</a>, <a href="https://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>, and <a href="https://skydrive.live.com/">Skydrive</a>. If there is a problem, it usually can easily be solved by sending someone a RTF document.</p><p>Life is not nearly simple when you start trying to share files with people of varying ages and technology skills.</p><h2>The Challenges Of Email And File Sharing</h2><p>When I started sending my files to other church elders, I thought the easiest and most foolproof thing would be to share a document and send the sharing notice with the <a href="http://www.crystalcoastlife.com/images/googledocssharingoptions.jpeg">content of the report pasted into the email</a>. To be blunt, that was a disaster. Some complained that they could not even open my email. It left me wondering how that could be.</p><p>The mystery started to clear when it occurred to me that a lot of people have become occasional email users and they are accessing their email on everything from a browser to get to ISP-provided email to iPads and smartphones with a variety of email clients—some of which an email snob like me considers pretty shaky.</p><p>One of my preferred technologies is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Message_Access_Protocol">IMAP email</a> and preferably IMAP on a server in the cloud that I manage or one that is managed by people who actually know what they are doing and are focused on getting my email from me to the people I want to contact. While I use <a href="http://mail.google.com/">Gmail</a> (IMAP version of course) for personal email, it is not my choice for business email.</p><p>I am not a big fan of webmail portals, which I considered are at best a necessary evil when a hotel’s Internet service blocks a port and makes it impossible to use client-based email.</p><p>When I started looking at the email providers used by some of the people with whom I was trying to communicate, I knew that attachments were likely going to be problems.</p><h2>One Man's Battle With Attachments</h2><p>Recently, I found out just how much of a problem attachments can be even in a very small group. At our most recent HOA board meeting, I ended up being the secretary when Anne, our very competent secretary, had to take one of her children to the doctor.</p><p>I managed to scribble down some notes and took Anne’s advice and typed them up that same evening while things were still fresh in my mind. I actually tried typing them up in Pages 5, since I was writing my <a href="http://readwrite.com/2013/11/21/why-less-might-actually-be-more-with-pages-5#awesm=~ooANPC2tgbCEXu">Why Less Might Be More In Pages 5</a> article. I had some trouble getting the bullet numbering right so I moved it to Google Docs and actually sent her a Word docx file. There were a few details that needed to be added a little later before the minutes were finalized.</p><p>A few days later she sent out the completed minutes. I had no trouble viewing the file she sent but I did notice that somehow the file extension had been stripped. I added a .RTF to it and opened it file in Word, but strangely it would not open in Nisus Writer Express or Page 5. I chalked that up to stuff that just happens in the computer world.</p><p>We were already having more than a little trouble getting everyone’s approval on the emailed minutes attachment before printing and being mailed out. When we did not hear from the other two board members regarding the attachment, I sent an email to Anne and said that since she was out of town I would print the minutes and take them to the other board members. I did that at noon the next day.</p><p>At the first board member’s house, I was told they had two computers and one computer seemed to be eating all the emails before the other one could read them. Following my rule of never getting involved in solving a technology problem unless the person is a blood relative, I did not bring up the subject that their email was likely POP and the first computer was likely removing the email from the server. I handed them the printed copy and just made sure the board member was happy with it.</p><p>At the second and last house, the wife of the HOA’s president took the printed copy and said she would deliver them to her husband when they met for lunch later that afternoon.</p><p>I did not think anything more of our problems until the president of the HOA showed up at my door that same Saturday afternoon. While he had gotten the printed copy of the file that I delivered, he wanted to know why he could not open the attachment sent by our secretary. He had tried unsuccessfully on his Android tablet and Android smartphone.</p><p>It took me a minute to remember the missing file extension on the attachment and a lot longer to find a free app, <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mobisystems.office">OfficeSuite</a>, to install on his smartphone. Just to be perverse, before I forward him the file again, I added a .docx extension to the original file the secretary had sent. I tested the file on <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.office.officehub">Mobile Office 365</a> on my smartphone before opening it without any problem on his smartphone using OfficeSuite. He left happy that he could read the minutes. I did not spoil the good feeling by telling him a program could easily strip the extension again the next time the minutes are sent.</p><h2>Lessons Learned</h2><p>All of this is far more complex than it needs to be. Holding classes on how to collaborate with others using electronic devices is beyond what I want to tackle in an area that I love but which gets most of its time sensitive communications from hand-lettered bed sheets on posts at the intersection of the main highways instead of through Twitter.</p><p>It turn out that email is the solution. You just have to keep it very simple. If you have to share something with people with whom you do not work, do not do attachments. Just copy the text of your report and paste it as plain text into an email.</p><p>Do not even dream of trying to get a diverse group of people using Google Drive or Dropbox, just be smart and revert to the simplest email that you can use. Follow my recommendations and use <a href="http://www.aweber.com/blog/email-template-design/should-i-use-text-or-html.htm">plain text email</a> and cross your fingers. At our church, which is a larger group, I just quit doing reports. It makes life a lot easier.</p><p><em>Image courtesy of <a href="http://www.shutterstock.com">Shutterstock</a>.</em></p>Email is in high use in the workplace, but not so much in consumer land. How multiple clients and use cases can make simple things like file sharing a torment.http://readwrite.com/2013/11/29/think-email-is-dead-outside-of-work
http://readwrite.com/2013/11/29/think-email-is-dead-outside-of-workSocialFri, 29 Nov 2013 08:02:00 -0800David SobottaWhy Less Might Actually Be More With Pages 5<!-- tml-version="2" --><p>Pages has always been a powerful application with some interesting capabilities. It has also inspired fierce loyalty among those users who learned to utilize its somewhat quirky interface. But without a cross platform version, Pages never came close to challenging Word as the industry-standard word-processing software.</p><p>But the new version of Pages is free when you purchase new Mac hardware or for those who purchased the earlier 2009 version. Cross-platform compatibility is no longer a limitation, since Pages 5 also works across a wide range of platforms by using the iCloud version in a browser.</p><p>Given Microsoft Office's subscription model with a yearly fee of just under $100 and Page's new capabilities, Microsoft could have a fight on its hands.</p><h2>Turning The Pages</h2><p>The new Pages is very different from the old version. There were some advanced desktop publishing features that worked very well in the 2009 version of Pages.</p><p>Years ago, I used one of Pages' default templates to create a tri-fold brochure with linked text boxes. It was drop-dead easy to get text to flow from one box to another. I published my brochure monthly in relatively small quantities and on the right paper it looked very professional. When I tried to move up to larger volumes, though, I ran into what has often been a problem for Mac users in the business world. I never could find Mac drivers that worked properly for our much faster office printer.</p><p>Eventually I moved my brochure document to Microsoft Word just to use the faster printer. Because I was able to modify the document in Word without losing the formatting it inherited from Pages, I never went back to Pages. Word became my word processor of necessity for the brochure. Pages was just different enough that if you did not use the application regularly, you could easily stumble while remembering how to use it again.</p><h2>Taking Pages 5 For A Spin</h2><p>While the new Pages 5 will not do everything the old Pages 2009 would do, it is far easier to pick the product up and use it casually.</p><p>With Pages 5, Apple seems to have hit a sweet spot of ease of use, while still covering basic capabilities for a large number of users. Unfortunately, some missing features might alienate the most faithful and serious Pages users.</p><p>The biggest complaint I have heard is the inability to link text boxes and have text flow from one text box to another—which was one of the features I appreciated the first time I used Pages. While text flow is an important capability for longer, complex documents, I suspect the wider appeal of the new simpler Pages interface might outweigh a loss in capabilities like this.</p><p>In order to test the new Pages and its iCloud cousin, I wrote this article using the application. I exported the file as a docx or Word file and saved it to iCloud. I tried editing the document using the iCloud version of Pages 5 in a variety of browsers. I really did not find surprises except I managed to edit the document in Firefox in Linux.</p><p>Both Word 2011 on the Mac and the full version of Word 2013 on Windows were able to open and edit the docx file. I was also able to open and edit the file using Office 365 mobile on my Android phone. You really should not have a problem moving a Pages 5 document around among different platforms.</p><p>While it has added better cross platform compatibility through the use of the iCloud version, the new Pages 5 has not lost the traditional Apple ease of use in graphics. I tested this by dragging an image from my desktop to a Pages document with text and comparing that to doing the same thing in a Word 2013 document in Windows.</p><p>For non-Word experts the context-sensitive Pages 5 image tools are probably easier. Once you have an image in the Pages 5 document, you are presented with a very nicely designed set of tools in a panel on the right side of your screen. You can apply styles to the image, change the exposure and saturation among other things, rotate the image in degree increments and set how you want it to interact with the text. I think Apple has done a very good job redesigning the image tools.</p><p>It is very simple to take a basic Pages document and add a chart to it. Once you have selected what type of chart you want to use, just drag it into the document, resize it, and edit you chart data. I found creating a simple chart easier than it is in Excel. Plucking some data from an Excel spreadsheet and creating a chart in Pages is about as easy as it gets.</p><p>I also selected text in three different word processing packages on the Mac and just dragged it into a Pages 5 document with no problems. In essence you can use Pages 5 as a tool to put together a lot of different bits of information quickly and easily. If you are not a Microsoft Word expert or if you find yourself always asking someone how to do something in Word, Pages 5 might be worth considering. Certainly the price is right if you are buying a Mac.</p><h2>A Few Blemishes On Pages</h2><p>The new Pages is not perfect. I found a few challenges. Mixing bulleted list styles in Pages 5 is not as easy as it is in Google Docs, which is a favorite feature of mine for simple documents—but that is a very minor issue.</p><p>I do miss the ability to export RTF (Rich Text Format) documents from Pages 5. However, in a rather unique twist you can export your document to the old Pages 09 and then use Pages 09 to export a RTF version. It is a little weird seeing Apple accept the Microsoft docx format as a standard format for exports from Pages, but it works.</p><p>Also, if you are looking a way to do mail merge, that capability has been dropped from Page 5 altogether.</p><p>Pages 5 did crash on me once during my tests and I did have to rewrite a tiny part of the document. Apple is not noted for bullet proof first releases, but they generally provide early updates quickly.</p><h2>Finding The Best Pages User</h2><p>People with complex business needs might be disappointed with the new Pages. However, those of us who want a simple word processor with a basic set of very powerful tools could end up being Pages fans. Having the ability to access the documents on multiple platforms through a browser is a real win.</p><p>For years, I have heard some of my Apple friends saying that they would like the simplicity of the old MacWrite with the added power of some simple desktop publishing tools. Pages just might be that package and you can also collaborate on a document. While collaboration does not seem as sophisticated as available Google drive documents, the current collaboration in iCloud Pages is a good start.</p><p>I am often a hard-to-please Apple critic, but I like Pages 5. I think most people will. Unfortunately to get Pages to work across as many devices as it does, Apple had to give up some features. I think it was a positive trade off.</p><p></p><p><em>Image courtesy of Apple.</em></p>With the redesign and the reduction in cost to the low price of free, can Pages 5 be a real challenger to Microsoft Word?http://readwrite.com/2013/11/21/why-less-might-actually-be-more-with-pages-5
http://readwrite.com/2013/11/21/why-less-might-actually-be-more-with-pages-5WebThu, 21 Nov 2013 06:03:00 -0800David SobottaState of the OS: Three Operating Systems, Three Upgrades<!-- tml-version="2" --><p>As a veteran of many operating system upgrades, I am usually somewhat cautious when it comes to system upgrades, but keeping my data in the cloud has perhaps made living on the wild side a little less dangerous.</p><p>I have two desktop computers, an I5 Mac Mini and Lenovo tower also powered with an I5 processor. In addition to OS X, the Mac Mini also runs Xubuntu Linux through VMware Fusion.</p><p>During the last ten days of October 2013, I did major upgrades on all three of my operating systems. Over the years I have seen lots strange things happen when doing a single operating system upgrade. I once did a Mac OS X upgrade and it took me a week to get my email to work again. I have done early Linux upgrades and had <a href="http://viewfromthemountain.typepad.com/david_sobotta_weblog/2005/12/the_curse_of_su.html">applications break</a> beyond my ability to fix them. Linux upgrades caused me so many problems that I gave up on the operating system until I discovered Ubuntu.</p><p>I don’t have as much experience upgrading Windows systems since I typically have gotten my new operating systems by purchasing a new computer and passing on my old Windows machines to someone else. Still, I <a href="http://viewfromthemountain.typepad.com/applepeels/2008/04/a-mac-users-con.html">lived through the many upgrades to Vista</a>, so I saw networking on my laptop break more than once.</p><p>Doing three major upgrades very close together is obviously inviting trouble. However, it is also a good way to measure if we are making any progress in the operating system world.</p><h2>Enter The Penguin</h2><p>For years, I lived by the mantra of a “clean install” when upgrading my Macs. This time I decided to go for broke and make the first upgrade on my virtual Linux system, pushing my Xubuntu install up to Saucy Salamander—aka Ubuntu 13.10—the underpinning of Xubuntu Linux.</p><p>To be very honest, my Linux upgrade happened behind the scenes with no intervention from me other than typing my administrative password and rebooting Linux. I am sure the Linux folks added a lot to the latest version and I have <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SaucySalamander/ReleaseNotes">read the notes</a>, but so far my undiscerning Linux eye hasn’t found anything which looks new. I mostly use the Firefox browser and Thunderbird email client on Linux. They both seem to work the same as they did before. LibreOffice has a <a href="http://www.libreoffice.org/download/4-1-new-features-and-fixes/">few new features</a>, including the ability to embed fonts in documents when sending them to someone else. It is a credit to the Linux folks that upgrading is now so painless. I am happy with my Linux world.</p><h2>The Race Is On</h2><p>My experiences upgrading to Windows 8.1 and OS X Mavericks were more interesting.</p><p>I had been forewarned that the download for Mavericks could be slow, so I started the download before I went to bed. The next morning when I came upstairs to my office, I found that I had a successful download and OS X Mavericks was ready to be installed. Being a little old school, I used <a href="http://liondiskmaker.com/">DiskMaker X</a> to make a bootable OS X Mavericks installer on an empty USB drive so I would not have to go through the download again in case there was a need.</p><p>Also, to make things more interesting, I queued up the Windows 8.1 download so I could start it at the same time OS X Mavericks started installing. Not that it really matters much, but it turned out Windows 8.1 downloaded and installed quicker than OS X Mavericks finished installing.</p><p>Surprisingly, the upgrades went smoothly for both the Lenovo desktop and the Mac Mini. Of course we all know that the fun begins once you start trying to do the same things that were once easily accomplished using your old operating system.</p><h2>Checking Out Mavericks</h2><p>One of my least favorite parts of operating system upgrades is having to buy upgraded applications that are broken by the operating system upgrade. Usually there is at least one, and it was not surprising that VMware, my virtual machine client, was the one that broke. Which meant that things were starting not to work well in Linux, though no fault of Xubuntu's.</p><p>I checked and found that there was a “new and improved” VMware version that was designed to work with OS X Mavericks. I paid the $49.95 upgrade fee, downloaded and installed the new version of VMware, and my Xubuntu experience was back to normal.</p><p>I did the OS X Mavericks upgrade hoping that the new OS would fix a printing problem that developed with Mountain Lion. I have three printers on a network and one of them was showing as available on the Mac, but when I tried to print to it, it would never connect. The same printer worked fine from my Windows computer on the same network. I tried reinstalling it a couple of times but I never could get it to work.</p><p>I was pleasantly surprised when I tried to print to the printer under Mavericks and it actually worked. Unfortunately a couple of days later, it quit working so I finally gave up and hooked it to the Mac using USB while having the Windows machines access the printer through Ethernet.</p><p>So far I have only had one crash on my Mac running Mavericks. It was the old version of Pages and it has not happened again.</p><h2>Windows On The World</h2><p>How did the Windows system upgrade fare? Actually, things seemed to go very well until I tried to upload some photos using the built-in SD slot on my Lenovo tower. The SD slot did not work.</p><p>I rebooted and it worked, but the next time I tried it, it would not work again. I plugged in an external SD reader and it seems to work fine. It is actually a little easier to reach that than the slot in the tower so I may just ignore the problem.</p><p>I did have another somewhat scary problem after I upgraded to Windows 8.1: when I tried to wake the system from sleep the next day, I got the message that my system was broken and needed to be taken to a dealer. I rebooted, the message went away, and so far the problem has not reappeared. My fingers remain crossed.</p><p>So far on Windows, all my applications are working and Windows 8.1 is still <a href="http://readwrite.com/2013/01/14/the-real-problem-with-the-windows-8-user-interface-and-it-isnt-touch">the same multi-personality OS</a> that it was before. I use <a href="http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/">Start8</a>, so I mostly ignore the new Windows 8 interface on my desktop machine. I do use the touch features on my Lenovo Yoga which I have not upgraded to Windows 8.1.</p><h2>The Biggest Changes</h2><p>Of all the changes in the three operating systems, the one that tried to change the way I work the most was the new default way that second screens are used on the Mac. My <a href="http://readwrite.com/2013/02/11/home-virtualization-the-new-power-user">Mac desktop has two screens</a> and after a few days I decided the new setting which gives each screen its own Space just would not work for me. I found the solution buried deep in the Mission Control preferences. There is a check box that lets me change back to the old way where a single Mac window could stretch across two screens.</p><p>I haven’t used the new iWork suite extensively, but with no support for linked text boxes, it is <a href="http://www.macworld.com/article/2059208/pages-5-0-for-mac-review-apple-writes-a-new-chapter-for-its-word-processing-app.html">definitely not the same Pages</a>. I am most impressed with iWorks in the Cloud. It seems to be a nice balance of speed and functionality. I even got it to work from a browser in Linux. I have tried opening a couple of RTF format documents with Word and iWorks. iWorks looks like it might be speedier. I have been told the formats of the new version of iWorks are not backward compatible with old versions but you can export the new versions to the old format.</p><p>All in all, congratulations should go out to the folks who have brought us these modern operating systems. My triple roll of the upgrade dice was definitely made on a hot table.</p>How does upgrading Linux, Windows and OS X at nearly the same time actually work? You might be surprised.http://readwrite.com/2013/11/11/state-of-the-os-three-operating-systems-three-upgrades
http://readwrite.com/2013/11/11/state-of-the-os-three-operating-systems-three-upgradesCloudMon, 11 Nov 2013 07:02:00 -0800David SobottaJust How Bad Is Your Internet Connection?<!-- tml-version="2" --><p>If you are wondering just how well your own Internet connection stacks up against others, the question is actually pretty easy to answer if you live in the United States: your connection is likely small broadband.</p><p>It is also probably slower and <a href="http://newamerica.net/publications/policy/the_cost_of_connectivity">more expensive</a> than you will need very soon. <a href="http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=z8ii06k9csels2_&amp;ctype=l&amp;strail=false&amp;bcs=d&amp;nselm=h&amp;met_y=avg_upload_speed&amp;scale_y=lin&amp;ind_y=false&amp;rdim=country&amp;idim=country:US:CA:AU:FI:FR:DE:JP:SG:KR:SE:NL&amp;ifdim=country&amp;ind=false">This Google chart</a> shows where the U.S. ranks in upload speeds among a few countries, and it's not very pretty.</p><p>High-quality broadband services are a key infrastructure piece for this information-focused century. If creating and sharing information defines our jobs, we need to be able to upload it faster than most of us can today.</p><h2>Where We Should Be</h2><p>When Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, <a href="http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CRPT-104hrpt458/pdf/CRPT-104hrpt458.pdf">the conference report</a>&nbsp;discussed the goal of opening the door to competition. The hope was that the private sector would improve all sorts of communications and get us on the road to the future.</p><p>There have been some benefits; certainly getting my telephone service from either the cable or phone company has driven down the cost of my phone service. However, my triple-play bundle, which includes phone service, is up to $165 monthly.</p><p>For that cost, my wife and I enjoy lots HD television channels we hardly watch, some Netflix shows, inexpensive long distance calls, even to Canada and enough bandwidth to do basic video conferencing and computer work that accommodates my home office work.</p><p>But the promised competition has not applied to broadband speeds: while many Americans got access to this kind of small broadband, there is no magic technology will make Internet speeds significantly better in the foreseeable future.</p><p>On top of that, the U.S. government estimates that demands on broadband will increase by an astronomical number in the next three years, as more and more people figure out how to use it.</p><p>Already I notice the difference in my Internet access on weekdays when the older kids are home. While we do not have snow days like <a href="http://www.crystalcoastlife.com/images/snowdayeffect.jpg">this chart</a>, the bad-storm effect is similar and it makes working from home harder. As more and more tablets and smartphones are used at home, the demands will increase on our networks built with yesterday’s technologies.</p><p>More importantly, no one is really competing for my Internet business. I either take what the cable company offers me or suffer the indignity of using DSL or satellite. Phone company technologies have dropped far behind cable company technology. <a href="http://computer.howstuffworks.com/vdsl.htm">VDSL</a>, the phone companies' next-generation technology, offers faint hope only for the subdivisions built within the last ten years or so, because VDSL requires fairly new copper wires.</p><h2>Where Is The Fiber Solution?</h2><p>If you do believe that big, affordable broadband will be a significant engine of growth in this century, the only real solution is fiber to the home (FTTH). The million-dollar question: how are we going to get it and pay for it?</p><p>Most of us who have modest, small-broadband service today have it because some company makes a lot of money from wires buried a long time ago. There is little business incentive for the people who own the current buried wires to replace them with fiber. It will take time to recoup the cost of burying fiber and running it to our homes. Verizon’s FIOS, which cherry-picked some of the best neighborhoods, has <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-tech/post/verizon-ends-satellite-deal-fios-expansion-as-it-partners-with-cable/2011/12/08/gIQAGANrfO_blog.html">stopped</a> its expansion.</p><p>Incumbent service providers claim that most Americans already have access to “broadband.” The problem is that the access is to small broadband with almost no chance of an improvement in the near term.</p><p>So if cable and phone companies think things are hunky dory, what is going to save us?</p><p>One alternative could be public-private partnerships that delivers an open fiber network upon which vendors compete for customers. Governments can finance the construction costs of fiber with low cost bonds. In return for a negotiated long-term use of the network by public entities, the ownership and management of network is transferred to a private company set up just for this purpose.&nbsp;</p><p>Modern governments have large communications bills from leasing high speed lines for integrated communications services including fire, police, security, government and schools. Having access to a low cost, high quality infrastructure with fixed costs instead of annually rising costs can make lots of financial sense to municipalities especially if they already own their own utility company.&nbsp;</p><p>A well-run municipal network, with business and home customers can cover construction costs in ten years. The key here, of course, is “well-run.”</p><h2>Can Government Handle The Fiber?</h2><p>Along with the successes in pushing fiber to communities, there have been some locations where cities and towns assumed that running a sophisticated network was simple, like running an electric utility selling something that everyone has to have. This has often turned out not to be the case.</p><p>A phased approach to extend the fiber neighborhood by neighborhood often makes most sense. The service you deliver has to be affordable with competitive offerings. Running a FTTH enterprise with a lean staff has to use all the automation that it can, because taking care of broadband customers is not a nine-to-five job. On top of that, if you want FTTH to be successful, you have to market it.</p><p>Some of these success factors are not government strengths. Private entities can step in and help navigate the path to success or even provide software to help.</p><p>The best-run big broadband systems have open networks, where the service providers can jockey for the consumer’s business. Think of it like a road. While the government owns the roads, they do not determine which businesses can use it or what products and services those business can supply.</p><p><a href="http://www.bbpmag.com/MuniPortal/EditorsChoice/1111editorschoice.php">With 135 miles of fiber</a>, Danville, Virginia has made strides at transforming their manufacturing dependent economy. They now have over 500 homes in their initial FTTH deployment. It is doubtful that Danville would be able to lay claim to the first site with a next-generation supercomputer outside of federal laboratory or university without their fiber network.</p><p>One recent project, <a href="http://chattanoogagig.com/">Chattanooga’s FTTH</a>, has gotten a lot of publicity recently. Chattanooga’s electric company runs the service andhas also modernized their electric grid to use the Internet to reroute electricity around outages. <a href="https://fiber.google.com/about/">Google’s fiber projects</a> in Kansas City, Provo, and eventually Austin, Texas have also made the headlines.</p><p>You do not have to be a city to need better connectivity. <a href="http://www.thewiredroad.net/about-us">The Wired Road Project</a> is a project in rural Southwest Virginia with a mix of fiber and wireless. It is bringing big, affordable broadband to many who have never had it.</p><h2>Providers Hold Fiber Back</h2><p>Fiber to the home is a little like <a href="http://www.dailyyonder.com/rural-broadband-lets-talk-about-cost/2009/11/03/2429">the push of electricity to our rural areas</a> in the 1930s. However incumbents are a lot smarter today. Through aggressive lobbying, they have convinced a number of states to pass bills making it harder for municipalities to become involved in fiber.</p><p>In North Carolina, Time-Warner and other small-broadband providers <a href="http://www.govtech.com/technology/Municipal-Broadband-Networks-Outlawed-North-Carolina.html">successfully lobbied for stringent restrictions</a> on new municipal fiber projects. A couple of municipalities, including Wilson in eastern North Carolina, were grandfathered in but there have been no new municipal FTTH projects in the state since the bill passed.</p><p>Wilson’s <a href="http://www.greenlightnc.com/">Greenlight Community Broadband</a> has been a huge success for the town and compared favorably to the winner of our speed tests for best broadband, <a href="https://fiber.google.com/about/">Google Fiber</a>. People and small companies needing true big broadband are moving to Wilson from the Raleigh-Durham area because of Wilson’s fiber network. &nbsp;As someone who lives in North Carolina, I can attest to people moving from the Research Triangle area to Wilson is a huge shift from the status quo. &nbsp;Wilson, with a population of less than 50,000 people runs their own services and a basic triple-play package of phone, cable and a symmetric 20 Mb/s Internet connection is only $99.95 per month. &nbsp;A basic Internet package with a 20 Mb/s connection is $39.95 and their top-level service is $149.95.</p><p>You can check <a href="http://www.muninetworks.org/communitymap">this community network map</a> out to see if you live in a state with restrictive laws and what big broadband is near you. Or you can peruse this chart to see cities within the U.S. currently rank with broadband.</p><p></p><div tml-image="ci01b2830ba0028266"><figure><img src="http://a1.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,q_80,w_620/MTIyMzA0MjI0MjM0MjA0NDQx.jpg" /></figure></div><p>Larger municipalities have not been as eager to embrace FTTH. One reason is they often have more large companies who can afford the cost of high-speed Internet access to city offices. There are <a href="http://www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2013/03/why-are-there-no-big-cities-municipal-broadband-networks/4857/">no big cities on the list of fiber projects</a> at this point and it will not be an easy matter to change this.&nbsp;Commentary on the issue spans the whole spectrum of opinions from&nbsp;<a href="http://andrewcrain.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/9/">Andrew Crane</a>&nbsp;who really doesn’t think there is much of a problem to&nbsp;<a href="http://scrawford.net/blog/">Susan Crawford</a>&nbsp;who thinks quite the opposite.</p><p>One way to think about the whole issue is to look at your bill for TV/cable/Internet. Using my new rate and projecting a 15% annual savings with a more competitive fiber network shows I could save $3,000 over ten years. I would also have Internet speeds and quality of service that I can only dream of today. There are 45 homes in our subdivision with similar cable bills so the potential for savings is substantial.</p><p>Could savings such as this finance FTTH? It is possible, but only if service providers stop fighting progress.</p><p><em>Image courtesy of <a href="http://www.shutterstock.com">Shutterstock</a>.</em></p>What you think of as broadband is actually not that fast, as far as Internet speeds go.http://readwrite.com/2013/10/28/just-how-bad-is-your-internet-connection
http://readwrite.com/2013/10/28/just-how-bad-is-your-internet-connectionCloudMon, 28 Oct 2013 08:02:00 -0700David Sobotta